Want to beat facial recognition software? Become a Juggalo

There are plenty of reasons to never, ever, ever become a Juggalo, chief of which being you brand yourself as a fan of the Insane Clown Posse.

The horrorcore duo – consisting of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope – are just the worst, yet they have managed to amass a seriously dedicated following, their truest fans identifying as Juggalos.

(I can’t begin to explain how strange it is that I’ve now written the words ‘Juggalo’ and ‘Juggalos’ without a single red line appearing under them to indicate a typo – HOW HAS THIS WORD MADE IT INTO THE LEXICON?)

Juggalos make their presence known by wearing the kind of clown makeup that would upset John Wayne Gacy – basically white grease paint as a base, with black accents and angles.

A post shared by JUGGALO (@juggaloicplokey) on Jun 28, 2018 at 10:08pm PDT

But while Juggalos are a subculture, they’ve become common enough that this year will see the 19th annual Gathering of the Juggalos, where some 10,000 painted-up ICP fans will get together from July 18-21 to “live, laugh and dance at the greatest family reunion on Earth!”

Okay, that actually does sound super fun. Fair play, Juggalos.

However, if you can’t make it to Legend Valley, Ohio, for the Gathering, there’s actually another reason to get your grease paint out and start learning the words to “Santa’s A Fat Bitch”.

In a follow-up, @tahkion said, “corpse paint is generally not enough to defeat facial recognition”, meaning being pale and having bags under your eyes isn’t a means to defeat our evil machine overlords.

So what is it about the Juggalo look that so confounds machine learning? According to @tahkion, it’s that this particular style of makeup “basically totally redefines what is interpreted as the jawline”.

for anyone wondering why some face changes evade facial recognition and others don't, here's a visualization of how landmarks are placed on a few examples. juggalo makeup is particularly effective as it basically totally redefines what is interpreted as the jawline pic.twitter.com/dFSx5FEGc9